This month's newsletter focuses on travel. I thought I would contribute an article that deals with travel in a more mystical sense - a journey inward and towards one's center of knowing.

To be a dancer with spirit and presence is to be a dancer with "knowing." Dr. Wayne Dyer, a wonderfully spiritual motivational author and speaker, describes "knowing" this way: "When I get on my bicycle I do not have a goal of being able to balance myself again [after all those months], I do not have a belief that I can ride it, I have an internal knowing." In speaking of this knowing, he goes on to say, "Deep within you is a unified field of limitless possibilities. When you become competent at going to this wondrous place you will discover an entirely new realm of human experience where all things are possible. It is here that real magic takes place and you can begin to manifest all you seek in your physical world. Limits simply do not exist…" (footnote #1)

This magic is what is stage presence. When you see a dancer who is in this realm of knowing you know you are seeing something special and wonderful. A dancer can have flawless technique, she can be certain and confident of her skills and performance, and she has reached the stage of belief about herself and her abilities. But unless she has dipped into that "field of limitless possibilities" you will not see the magic. Many times a skilled dancer will come to me - sometimes even a dancer who has reached a professional level - for guidance. She knows herself that although she is skilled and believes in her abilities, that the light around her is dim - that she does not shine, that she has not mastered that magic quality of stage presence.

I assert that stage presence is not elusive. I also assert that it can be learned and that it can be practiced while technique and skills catch up to it. We have always heard the expression: "A diamond in the rough." We can have a dancer with exquisite skill who has no magic - that is cubic zirconium. We enjoy watching her, we are even dazzled at times, but something is missing. She is enough to satisfy the naive, but we experienced dancers find something tiresome about seeing her time after time. Then you can have a dancer who still has not polished her technique, but something exciting and sparkling shines through. This is the diamond in the rough. This is the dancer we are happy to see over and over again, as we watch her grow and develop. If you have a dancer who has the technique AND the sparkle… well, then … you now are in the presence of magic, and you know it.

True magical stage presence is the entire package - technique, confidence, expression, posture, grooming, attire, skill, and the "knowing" that Dr. Dyer speaks of. Another journey into the magic of "knowing" is described by Deepak Chopra in his audio book, Magical Mind, Magical Body: "Suddenly he (Joe Namith) felt he wasn't playing the game, the game was playing itself out through him, and he was just moving spontaneously, effortlessly in the right direction - the right moves - everything was completely non-verbal - thought is not involved. As soon as desire begins to flow then thought is not involved at all. A good musician will tell you a peak experience comes when he doesn't seem to be playing. The music plays through him. A good dancer will tell you after a while the dance is expressing itself through the dancer. That's how song writers write poems, philosophers write philosophy - like that: it comes to them. This is how the universe expresses itself - through effortless being. Have the desire and let it go… This is what magical thinking is." (footnote #2)

Is it an antithesis to say knowing comes only when there is no thought? Not really, not in the sense of a true journey to your inner self - where your body can be trusted to move to the music, to move to the beat of the drum, to move in harmony to the emotion being expressed. This trusting, this letting go, this journey to your core does not require conscious thought at all. It only requires that you know.

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Footnote #1: Dr. Wayne Dyner, "Real Magic," 1992, Harper Paperbacks

Footnote #2: Dr. Deepak Chopra, "Magical Mind, Magical Body," audiotape.